North Crawley crush New Bradwell to leap them in the table

Toby Lock

Huge knocks at the top of the order ensured North Crawley cruised past New Bradwell in Four Counties Division 1.

Matt Goss and Dean Adam put on 92 for the opening wicket before Adam fell for 61 from just 37 balls. Goss (78) was then joined by Sam Chapman (69), and between them put on 113 for the second wicket, taking the team to 205-2.

Matt Goss top scored with 78 for North Crawley

More solid knocks down the order saw the New Bradwell bowlers knocked all over the park before the close of the innings, with the home side back in at the turn on 317-7.

The response didn't get off to a good start either, with the visitors finding themselves on 39-3 before a mini-recovery in the middle of the innings, led by Chris Timms' 36. Ian Gillam was the pick of the bowlers for North Crawley as he took 3-38, though each of the other six took a wicket along the way as New Bradwell were all out for 198.

The result sees North Crawley leap-frog New Bradwell into sixth in the standings.

New City climbed out of the relegation zone after beating bottom club Biddenham by seven wickets. Vaib Tyagi took 5-42 as he helped total Biddenham for just 145.

And Dharmesh Mistry's unbeaten 71 helped New City (146-3) ease to victory and climb out of the bottom two.

They are replace there though by Printers, who were well beaten by leaders Thurleigh. Printers' afternoon got off to a poor start as they lost their opening three batsmen for just four runs between them. And with little signs of life further down the order, they were all out for just 120 - a total Thurleigh (125-1) needed just 17 overs to reach.

Milton Keynes were able to close the gap to the leaders though with a brilliant bowling display against Elstow in their 116 run win. With each of the top eight making handy runs, MK scored 217-9 from their 44 overs.

Elstow made a decent start to their innings, reaching 84-5, but from there, it all went wrong, largely thanks to MK's Kaushik Sunkara. His devastating 5-10 tore apart the Elstow lower order, reducing them for 101 and handing MK their full compliment of 30 points.